Headbeams, bursary awards and more

00:21 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from July the 9th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated stations of Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you need to do is search for the two words Talking Tech and [?Dan]. It can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast... Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.

With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David, we'll start with the product minute. A product from the Vision Store of Vision Australia. Another piece of headwear, I know.

01:17 S2

And this one's actually really, really cool. It's actually called the HeadBeam. Plus in effect it's a wearable torch. So you've got this band that goes around your head. So it's a soft fabric type band. It's got a little torch on the front of it, and it illuminates either spotlight or in general, so it can spotlight onto particular tasks such as, you know, doing your nails, for example, or you're doing sewing and so on, or it will do a general sort of floodlight type thing, and that means you can use it for, I don't know, looking in your pantry fossicking around in your car boot. So it's a general purpose headlamp to assist not only, you know, people with sight, but of course for us, for people with low vision. And you can adjust each one of those illumination ones. So the spotlight and the floodlight and it's also got an SOS. So it's got a red flashing light for SOS. 

But what I think is really cool about it is it has a motion sensor. So if you wave your hand in front of your face, it'll turn the torch on you wave your hand in front of your face again, turns the torch off. Now, I think that's really fantastic because I know a lot of times, my wife has turned up at our house and I forgot to. I'm doing something with the Wi-Fi network and the front light's off. And she has trouble finding her keys in a bag. If she had that available, she could just look down in the bag and see, OK, straight away. Or even see the keyhole, where to insert the key. So that's actually really handy. So I really think the headlamp plus, it's one of those things if you're low vision or you know, somebody that has difficulty seeing in dark, gloomy conditions, this thing is absolutely fantastic. And the fact about it is, it's only $25. 

So to me this is one of those things that's sort of like a no thing to even purchase. If you need one of these devices, it's called. It's actually called the HeadBeam Plus. So that's the name of it, HeadBeam Plus. And it's $25.

03:22 S1

HeadBeam Plus from the vision store at Vision Australia. Now speaking of Vision Australia, the bursaries for students are open for application again for next year's bursaries. Tell us about it.

03:37 S2

These are available every 12 months. And it's for people undertaking certificate four and above tertiary studies. So you know, things like TAFE and universities and so on. And it's available for students to help you buy your assistive technology. And the way you get involved in this is, you go along to Vision Australia org forward slash bursary. And it's got all the application details there. What sort of things you have to fill in. Who you probably need to talk to, where you get your assessments done and so on. And they close at the end of September. And then you will get notified towards the end of the year if you're successful or not in your bursary award. And then normally what happens in the new year is that you get a full assessment done by one of our technology staff just to finalise your assistive technology equipment. Then it's ordered delivered to you, set up and off you go, hopefully for your fantastic course next year.

04:37 S1

Very good. The Vision Australia Bursary. Go to the website, have a scratch around and give yourself plenty of time to get organised because it's fairly comprehensive. Yes, fairly thorough, but well worth it by the end of September. The BTspeak. We've spoken about it a number of times over recent months. There's an update just come out in the last few days.

05:01 S2

Look, I quite like these updates. I must say. The thing that's got my attention is that the the new version has got games in it now, so I can play a little text adventure game. It's got blackjack on there, and a few other little interesting bits and pieces. It's also got the new Vocalizer voices now. So that's things like Tom and Samantha and so on. So just to remind people, you now have choice between Espeak the Dectalk voice, the RH voice or voices and the Vocalizer voices, like I just said, like Tom and Samantha and so on. So that actually really makes things very clear because as people always know, whilst the ECB can speak many, many languages, it's not the most clearest voice on the planet.

05:47 S1

And we should just remind people what this amazing little device is.

05:50 S2

Simply, it's a note taking device. And it's also got a full desktop version. It does lots of things like text editing. You can do web browsing on it, you can record music, you can play radio stations, you can use a calculator. It just got a new phone book, which I'm trying to work out, why you'd want a phone book on something that doesn't have a phone in it. So it's got all different types of things. And of course, once you use the desktop mode of it, that gives you access to email and lots of other things as well. And it's based on Linux, not Android, and it's constantly under development. So, you know, like I said, about once a month you can expand a new new update to come out. 

And the one thing I just realised too, that it's got today in there too. They've split up the BT learn for learning Braille. So you've got a test mode in there, a games mode, and a mode just for learning the different letters of the alphabet. So I think that's actually quite good as well, especially since the BTspeak Pro has a Braille input keyboard.

06:53 S1

Yep, that's what it's called. The BTspeak Pro and the Braille input keyboard is the key thing, isn't it? It's just using those Braille keys so you can do it very easily. It doesn't take up too much space. Now also there's been an update to the device. From now on they sell an eight gigabyte version for RAM. Up until now, it's been four. And you can have your device modified to get that eight gigabytes. I think it's about $150 US. It would mean sending the device away and getting it back, but there are some benefits that they talk about on their website with that. So people might like to keep that in mind if they have one.

07:35 S2

I'm sort of going to wait and see what other people say on the internet. I don't tend to use many things in parallel on my system at the moment, and I don't use the desktop mode very heavily, which I'm assuming that's where you'd probably want the eight gigabytes coming in. So I'm just going to do a bit of a bit of wait and see, because at the moment, the way I use my one is quite okay.

07:55 S1

Speaking of the BT speak, let's talk about the long awaited announcement from the Orbit people about the OrbitSpeak.

08:03 S2

Yes. This has been one of those things that I think you and I have been talking about for... geez, I want to say about 18 months now or more. So for people that might remember the Orbit writer, which is the, you know, little Braille input keyboard that you can link up to your smartphone. Well, if you can imagine that device and then turn it into also speech output. So that's what the OrbitSpeak is. And there's two versions of the OrbitSpeak: the OrbitSpeak and the OrbitSpeak Plus. Both versions have various note taking functions, very similar in some ways to the basic version of or the traditional mode of the Speak Pro. So you've got things like an editor, a book reader, a calculator, a clock, date and time, and so on. 

So it's a basic note taking device, but then if you spend $100 us more, so the basic version is 5.99. The Plus version is 6.99. You basically get what's called the Entertainment version. So that includes things like being able to listen to podcasts, being able to stream internet radio, being able to do a voice recording because it does have a built in microphone and so on. I know it's $100 us cheaper to me. If you're going to buy something like one of these note takers, you're better off buying the one that's got more functionality in it. So have a bit of a think about it and just people's information. Any of the Orbit Reader products are not available in Australia, so you'll have to buy them from overseas.

09:30 S1

And talking of the Orbit products, the Orbit Reader 20 and the Orbit Reader 40, you can now get a Q 20 and a Q 40. So that's the QWERTY keyboard.

09:41 S2

Which I think is actually really, really good. This is the unit with the Braille display. And to me this reminds me of the the Mantis Q40. A lot of people are really good typists, as in keyboard typists, but you're a Braille user, so you want to be able to read in Braille. And this hits that sweet spot dramatically. And of course, it's a lot cheaper than, you know what the man is currently sells for. Like you said, Steve, it's got a 20 to 40 cell version of it with the Qwerty keyboard, and it interacts with your windows computer, your Mac, your Android device, and so on. So a really good implementation of having a device that has a QWERTY keyboard and a Braille display.

10:23 S1

Tell me about the 11 Labs Reader.

10:26 S2

So this is going to be interesting. So people might fondly remember 11 Labs where you log on to their website. And and you can copy a document into it and have it read out of these really fantastic different voices. Well, you've got an app version of this now for both iOS and Android coming soon. So you basically pop your text into this text field, and you can choose from stacks and stacks of different voices, including some well known voices like Laurence Olivier and so on. And then you can have it read back to you. And Thomas Donville from Applevis did a really good podcast on using the 11 Labs iOS app, and it's actually called Reader when you run it, and it's absolutely fantastic. 

And what he does, he uses the share tab on, you know, the files app or in a web page or on an email to then send whatever he wants to read out to 11 Labs Reader and just the voices that it reads out, you would not imagine that that's not a human being reading the document to you.

11:29 S1

11 Labs Reader. And then on your device it'll be known as Reader. 

S2

Correct. 

S1

The ABC listen app has had an update, a little difficult for users, but it's on its way and you can give them feedback if you don't like it, you can.

11:45 S2

And again, this applies for both the iOS version or the iPhone version and the Android version. So to me, what's happening at the moment is sometimes less than iOS. You, to think of magic double tap to start and stop playing doesn't always work. The Play button, whether you're playing a station or anything else, doesn't change between Play and Pause. It just says Play. And because the screen has got lots of information on the home screen now, it's a bit hard to find things. Now, before we came on air, you suggested, Steve, that if you go to your Listen, then you can navigate by Henning, and that's a better way to find content within the app at the moment. And as you just said, there's got a feedback link there where you can say if you're having any issues with the actual ABC Listen app itself, which they encourage you to give them feedback. You can send them feedback, and I've done that for voiceover, at least at the moment.

12:38 S1

The user interface has changed quite a lot, so you've got to play around with it and get familiar with it, and you'll find it pretty good. But there are a few funny things some people have experienced drain on their battery of their iPhone anyway, so that's one thing that will need attention, but I'm sure it'll all get fixed and run very smoothly indeed. They're very good. The ABC at responding to difficulties, particularly in the accessibility area. Tell us about Arcs and the latest update.

13:11 S2

So this is the wearable headset. So you've literally got a camera on a bone conduction headset. And that plugs in via a USB-C cable to traditionally your Android phone or your blind Sherlock Classic 2. And there is an app version for Arcs, which is the app that drives the headset coming out for the iOS system in. I think it's about four weeks as we go to air, which means on your iPhone 15 and above, because it has a USB-C port, you'll be able to plug in and use it, and which is actually really, really exciting. And 1.5 being the new version of the hardware. I had a look at it last week, and I must say, the new hardware looks really comfortable. And a little bit more adjustable than the version 1.0. 

And of course, it does things very similar to what you'd expect a wearable headset to do, such as scene detection and so on. And as with Android, the iOS version will also work with Navi lens for tagging and tag tracking, and also the seeing AI app from Microsoft, which is really, really exciting.

14:16 S1

So that's going to be very interesting. Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

14:25 S2

As always, you can check out my blog site, which is David would be Dot Podbean pod Band.com David.

14:32 S1

Would be our podbean pod b e a n.com to write to the program.

14:37 S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge - how it sounds - at Vision Australia dot org.

14:43 S1

david.woodbridge@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech - with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.